


Distance

by ceiland



Category: Transistor (Video Game)
Genre: Forgiveness, Gen, Light Angst, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 20:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5220296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceiland/pseuds/ceiland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sybil's made mistakes. But then, all four of them have. (Or: Asher knows what it's like to do things out of love.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> I always pictured Sybil and Asher as good friends. 
> 
> Written under the assumption that Sybil's trace is intact upon arrival in the Country, in the same way as Red gets her voice back.

The Country is quieter than the city ever was. Nothing but the wisp of wind through shifting wheat, or the shuffle of dirt underfoot. Cloudbank felt _alive_ —the thrum of traffic through its streets like a quick pulse in winding veins, alleys and back roads branching like capillaries. Always moving, always dynamic. And as much as the four of them had always hated the constant inconsistency of a city run on whims, the stagnation of the Country is suffocating.

“It feels dead.” Sybil plucks some of the stalks of wheat out of the ground, snapping them between her fingers.

“Just like us,” Asher says beside her, and she would laugh at that if she could remember how. She’s sitting down with her legs stretched out in front of her. Next to her Asher sits with his knees pulled up to his chest. It’s only been a day since everything. There’s nothing to _do_ , except sit here and think too much and talk in circles around the edge of everything that happened. “I wonder if this place has weather. It can’t all be blue skies and sunshine, can it?” It’d make sense. There’s none of the chokehold on the climate that Cloudbank citizens had had over the city.

“I don’t know.” He sounds and looks like he’s got something on his mind. Too quiet. Pensive. Not unusual even before all of this, but this time it’s something specific. Aside from the obvious. She got the rundown on what happened after she was processed—of course he looks upset. But she knows people, knows him, knows the look people get when they’ve got something to say that isn’t being said. “If a storm comes through, we’re screwed. That little farmhouse we’ve got isn’t going to put up much of a fight.” “Mm.”

There’s not much to say. Any other attempts at small talk would just feel inappropriate. She doesn’t exactly have experience with how to talk to people after the end of the world. The end of everything, at their own hands. This isn’t the worst punishment they could have gotten. Much less than they deserved. Although part of her still stands by their plans; what they could have accomplished if things hadn’t gone south. A change for the better, no more of the city turning itself in circles over and over again. But it got out of hand—slipped out of her control, brought everything else down with it. Because of her. At the heart of things, it’s because of her.

Silence settles between them. Sybil watches the wheat blow in the wind. Sees the way it stretches out to hem the horizon in the place of a city skyline. Cloudbank is gone, it seems, and she never even got to see its last moments. Perhaps for the best—perhaps better to remember it as it was, in the last of its glory, rather than as it was when it fell. She loved the city. They all did. That’s why they wanted to _fix_ it. “What did it look like,” she starts, “after the city got processed?”

Asher shakes his head. “I didn’t see much of it. After we got away from the Empty Set we locked ourselves up at the top of Bracket Towers. What I saw from the windows was… empty. Cold and white. Sterile. The Process tore it all to its roots. Royce could probably give you a better account. It started in Fairview, I think.” She can relate—fitting, maybe, that she got the same as she gave. It was still horrible; felt like being torn apart and reassembled into something else, something awful. Asher takes a deep breath laced with apprehension. Meets her eyes for the first time since they sat down here. He looks tired. “You knew that he would be there, didn’t you. That man.”

So that’s what he’s been waiting to say this whole time. It’s a statement more than it is a question. For the first time in a long time, Sybil has no idea what to say. She can’t bring herself to try. They look at each other until Asher breaks eye contact and turns back away.

“I want to blame you for this. But I can’t. All four of us set up the framework. We shouldn’t have been surprised when it collapsed in on itself. We did worse, in the larger scheme of things.” Something distant in downcast eyes. It snaps the last straw of Sybil’s resolve, and the words tumble out too fast to stop. “I love her. I loved her, I—” Red. She’d figured that with that man out of the way, Red would stop being so out of reach, always out of reach. An awful plan, perhaps, but it was an easy slope to slip down, and it’s always easier to separate _wrong_ and _right_ in hindsight. “I know. That’s why I can’t blame you. Not really. I’d be a hypocrite if I got on your case for something like this. And it’s not as if it can be undone.”

A strange sort of forgiveness. She smiles wryly as she looks down, the brim of her hat covering her eyes. “What about Grant and Royce? I’m sure they won’t exactly be overjoyed when they realize, if they haven’t already.” They’ve been friends for a long while—all of them, but her and Asher especially. Condemnation would hurt, even if she knows she deserves it.

Asher shrugs. “I don’t speak for them. But—” and the corner of his lip turns up a little, a dry smile, “—we are still the Camerata. They might not forgive you, and I’m not sure if _I_ do, but we’re not going to leave you.”


End file.
